THORNBURG, VA – When Old Dominion Speedway closed in 2012, it left many racers and race fans feeling homeless. However, Steve Britt had something bigger and better in the works.
When Britt sold the site of the former Old Dominion Speedway, which is now a residential development, for an undisclosed but considerable amount of money back in 2013, he could have ‘cut and run’ with his profit. Instead, the long-time race fan who spent many nights at Old Dominion Speedway as a high school student decided to take the financial risk and move forward with building a bigger, better racetrack in the Northern Virginia region.
“I can remember watching it on the Wide World of Sports so really the love started there,” Britt said. “I do enjoy this sport. I’m not a real racer as you know but I admire what the racers do here and I enjoy their company very much. I find them to be great people.
“Old Dominion was a very successful sale,” Britt continued. “It was something I enjoyed. My first exposure to Old Dominon was in high school and we had a speedway sportsman car there that I got the pleasure of working on that crew to field while I was in high school. I just had such a good time doing it, probably the best years of my life were in that period. So, I think, when we sold Old Dominion Speedway and we did well with it, that was a decision point about whether we should continue on. There were some metrics that were necessary for me at least to kind of continue with it and risk a lot of money.”
The road to a dream was a long road filled with discussions about finances, politics, zoning and permits. Stuff that would ordinarily bore people became of great interest to the displaced fans of Old Dominion Speedway. But, even before that took place, there had to be a plan. For Britt, the plan was creating a long term financial model that “makes sense for motorsports” with the ultimate goal of making Dominion Raceway viable.
“Without a good financial model, then it just doesn’t work as a business and, if it doesn’t work as a business, it’s probably not something I should be involved in so I think we created a great platform,” Britt elaborated. “It remains to be seen whether it will work but we’ve tried to include an entertainment piece in it and generate multiple revenue steams and sources to make it all kind of come together at the same time try to preserve ticket pricing and family fun for reasonable prices which I think is also key. So, it’s a domino.
“You’ve got to get the track up and going and popular and then some of the retail hopefully will follow and some of that will be used to retire some of the debt and, at the end of the day, hopefully you’re at a point where the servicing of the loan is not a big burden and the place is self sustaining and we’ll go on to some other things and see what we can do to continue the dream.”
After that came the political process. Britt had already had the support of Spotsylvania County’s elected leaders and from many of the residents in the area, which is growing in population and starved for an entertainment attraction. Britt’s plan, like any plan, had its opponents – largely from environmentalist and other detractors who doubted the track could spur any sort of economic growth.
“I think the community was ready for an entertainment venue here. They don’t have a whole lot right now so I think that was a good opportunity. The timing was perfect in that the county was looking for some economic activities that generated employment and also helped build business around the facility so that was all very good.”
Britt credits a lot of the success in terms of winning the support of the community to social media.
“What the key was, was really Old Dominion Speedway’s Facebook base. What we did was we took a social media approach to rezoning and Edwin gets a large portion of the credit for that. I think some of that was in his mind. We hired a guy that Edwin knew that I think did a great job initially. We basically demonstrated to the county that this was something that would be beneficial to them through the support of the existing base that we had which was primairly coming from Old Dominion Speedway.
Britt slowly won the support of many of his detractors. In fact, Dominion Raceway’s safety director and long-time racer Richard Storm, who has been a part of construction efforts, says some of the people who initially opposed Dominion Raceway have even come to the track to check on the progress. It was crucial for Britt to have the support of the community because Dominion Raceway is part of Spotsylvania County, not just a racetrack that hosts a handful of races.
“The last thing that’s important is that, any facility like this, this differs from like a national event track where they’re flying in and doing their thing and then going back to North Carolina, this is a community endevaour. You need the support of your community.
“Going in and alienating the community doesn’t make any sense. When you really need them to be part of the process, you have to go in and explain what you’re trying to do and get them on board and I thought we did an absolutely fabulous A++ job in that area. And today, I think even some of the detractors have kind of come to our side. We do have the support of the community, we understand that the community is part of the ownership here and that’s how we’re going to move it ahead.”
For race fans, the closure of Old Dominion Speedway left a void. It was the latest in a long list of tracks, including (most notably) Aquasco Speedway, Beltsville Speedway, Dorsey Speedway and Marlboro Motor Raceway in Maryland, to close permanently. Now, that void will be filled for racers and race fans alike, and not just fans of stock car racing but fans of road course racing as well.
Steve Britt hopes Dominion Raceway will become the future for short track racing and the future becomes the present on Saturday, April 9, 2016.
